1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a multi-cell rotor for an automatic analyzer for examining biological fluids such as blood, blood plasma or blood serum.
2. Description of the Related Art
German Patent Application 3,937,609 already discloses a cell rotor with individual, fully enclosed cells which are arranged in a circle and extend in a radial direction. The cells each have three chambers which are divided from one another by a dam. The cells are delimited in their radial direction by essentially parallel side walls, an upper part and a lower part. Each chamber has a pipette hole through which the biological fluid to be examined or the reagents can be added. In general, the biological fluid is introduced into the chambers arranged toward the axis of rotation, and the specific reagent and, if required, diluent is introduced into the peripheral chambers, said reagent and diluent mixing and reacting with the biological fluid as soon as the latter has passed over the dam and into the peripheral chambers by means of the action of the centrifugal forces. The optical measurement is carried out perpendicular to the rotor plane, with a fixed path length of the fluid to be analyzed.
In the known cell rotors, the number and shape of the chambers and also the measurement cells are uniform. It is not therefore possible to utilize the entire space available on the rotor for measurements. Since fewer measurement cells can be accommodated then there would be if the space were utilized to the full, the costs for each individual measurement are higher than need be. In addition, the walk-away time, that is the time during which the apparatus operates without supervision, is unnecessarily limited if the maximum number of cells cannot be found space on the apparatus.
Therefore, the object of the present invention is to develop a multi-cell rotor which, while allowing optimum utilization of the available surface area, permits the accommodation of a larger number of measurement cells on the rotor and additionally provides different chamber systems for the measurement cells, which satisfy the measurement demands by means of different types of chamber shapes and chamber volumes.
This object is embodied in the present invention as a multi-cell rotor for an automatic analyzer for examining biological fluids, in which measurement cells of different configurations and also chambers of different geometries, in identical or different configurations, are arranged on said rotor, receive different volumes of fluid, are used for preparing for measurements and can communicate with one another.